


Witch-heart, are you gold or black?

by middlemarch



Category: A Discovery of Witches (TV), All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness
Genre: Ashmole 782, F/M, Family, Matthew bragging about Diana, Romance, Vampires, Witches, Witchwind, the Congregation - Freeform, vampires have a thing about how OLD they are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 01:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Is he confiding in his mother or confessing? Or simply seeking her counsel?





	Witch-heart, are you gold or black?

“_Maman_, I must tell you about Diana,” Matthew said. Diana was in her tower, the one Ysabeau had given her, and she’d nodded with a gentle understanding when he told her he had to speak to his mother.

“I know, Matthew. I get family stuff, we all have it,” she’d said. He’d choked back his laughter, considering his family and hers, the difference fifteen hundred years and a taste for blood made. She’d patted his shoulder, the sensation curiously calming for once, though he felt the pull to mate with her all the time. Every fucking second. She’d settled down in some study filled with books from some century, he couldn’t remember which room, which books. He could hear her through the stone and smell her scent on his skin, especially the lady’s mantle and the honey.

“_Maman_, please,” Matthew said, when Ysabeau had not responded except to look at him with her lips pressed tight, her chin lifted gracefully. She might be a vampire, but she was Frenchwoman first.

“What is there to say? She is a witch, _non_? That is all I need to know, Matthieu.”

“She is not simply a witch,” Matthew said.

“She’s an American, I know. I don’t hold that against her,” Ysabeau said. She made a poor liar but she’d seen to it he had exquisite manners. He wouldn’t challenge her on that point.

“I’ve never met a witch so powerful,” he said.

“Does that signify? I cannot imagine the leader of the Knights of Lazarus, a de Clermont has spent much time with witches, to have a meaningful context. I know you have your laboratory, but those are genetic samples, not live witches performing spells.”

“She did not just retrieve Ashmole 782, she is capable of witchwind, _Maman_,” Matthew said.

“I had forgotten how old I was when I made you, Matéu. I have seen witches and witches. Witchwind is uncommon. It is not unique,” Ysabeau said, letting her accent become Occitan, saying the first name he’d ever known.

“She created it by drawing their breath. Every witch in the Bodleian, she called forth the air from their lungs, the spirit from their souls and the wind that comes in off the sea. Before I got to her, she would have killed them all. Peter Knox, the other witches in the Congregation, they won’t speak of it because it is too dangerous, but I’ve seen her power. She is untrained, without a true allegiance to them; she must terrify them, beyond any creature,” Matthew said. He remembered holding Diana in his grasp as the air battered them like knives. He recalled how even then, he’d wanted her and wanted to touch her cheek to soothe her, desire and tenderness inextricable, the blue of her eyes darkness and light.

“They will want to destroy her then. If they cannot control her,” Ysabeau said. “Not because she can get the book, not only that though it’s enough.”

“Yes.”

“You ask much, to keep her here,” Ysabeau said evenly.

“I’m asking for everything, _Maman_, and I know it. Only everything we have, everything we are will keep her safe,” Matthew said. 

“You’ve never asked for much,” Ysabeau said, startling him. “Perhaps that was wise of you, prescient.” She smiled, a rare smile he recognized, that his father would have teased from her.

“If it makes you and Marthe more willing to protect her, then yes, it was,” he said.

“Oh, Marthe! You never had to fret about her. She’s taken your little witch under her wing already. It’s enough you love the woman,” Ysabeau said.

“I haven’t told her that,” Matthew said.

“_Bien sur_! But Marthe knows and the little witch suspects.”

“Diana,” Matthew said, a correction.

“You’ve only been wise in one way, _mon cher_. And I will only promise to protect her, that’s all,” Ysabeau said.

“That is all I could ask of you, _Maman_.”

“No, it’s not, Matéu. Though it’s like you to say so. It is what makes you Matéu and Baldwin, Baldwin,” Ysabeau said.

“When I leave,” Matthew began.

“We will watch over her. Marthe and I, we make your fifteen hundred years seem an instant. We know what to do,” Ysabeau said.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re impatient to go to her, I know,” Ysabeau said.

“I am. I always am, but I await your pleasure, _madame_,” he said more formally. It drew from her another smile, the one that made her seem like a queen. Of dragons. 

“Make sure she dresses for dinner, no denim. We are _en famille_, yes, but there are still standards,” Ysabeau said, with a gesture Matthew knew meant he was dismissed, loved, and trusted. Diana would be safe at Sept-Tours and tonight, she would be very elegant, almost as lovely as when she read in the library, her delight a better ornament than any jewel.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I was unimpressed with the witchwind scene...and the physics make no sense. The wind is blowing stuff forwards and backwards and Diana is almost getting swept away? I decided it would be a lot more ominous if the wind was coming from all the witches but Diana was basically suffocating them while nearly blowing them all out the window. 
> 
> The title is from Amy Lowell.


End file.
